So, what if Apple did not take part in this year’s Mobile World Congress at Barcelona, it still hogged the limelight. Apple’ iPhone 4 has won the Best Mobile Device Award for the year 2011. This award was announced earlier today at the Mobile World Congress by the Global Mobile Awards. Apple made its presence felt despite being absent from this year’s show beating several other competitors whose smartphones were also considered for the Award.
The judges after awarding Apple the coveted Award commented that the iPhone 4 had a “Great screen, sharp design, fantastic materials, and phenomenal ecosystem for app developers. In a tight race, the iPhone 4 built on the success of its predecessors to set the pace for smart phones.”

Ironically, rumors are now spreading like wild fire that Steve Jobs looks extremely pale and may not be surviving the next weeks.

Well! At the moment, no one is backing off. Each one is taking the competition one step ahead and the next one is immediately coming back to stay at an even keel. Only a few days ago, Apple launched its digital subscription services for magazines, now its Google’s turn to churn out the same for publishers who want to go digital and cash in on the tablet craze. The new service, called Google One Pass allows the publishers to take 90 percent price for for any digital publication that users subscribe to. The publication can be through an app or be directly done on the web and the user would only have to pay for the content while using it without the need of maintaining an individual account.

Apple said that it would be taking a 30 percent share of such paid digital subscriptions from the publishers which was abruptly scorned by the media.

According to a tabloid published in National Enquirer, Steve Jobs would not survive for more than six weeks apparently. Well for now, this is only a rumor, but National Enquirer has also published pictures of Steve Jobs outside the Stanford cancer Center. Looking at the pictures, one can definitely say that Jobs looks awfully thin and frail. Jobs is suffering from pancreatic cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy for the same now. The tabloid has also reported that Jobs dropped around 45 pounds of weight after he has started his treatment for cancer in the past 6 weeks. Also, his hair is thinning which would only suggest that the treatment is intense and so is his disease.

Steve Jobs took an indefinite leave from office citing medical conditions (his third in the last 9 months). Steve Jobs is due to meet President Barack Obama today in California at the US hitech-gurus meet.

Last year at the same time during the Mobile World congress, Samsung unveiled Bada – its own phone OS. After an year, Samsung has now announced Bada 2.0, the next version of Bada 1.2, Samsung’s own smartphone OS today. Bada 2.0 will feature NFC (Near Field Communication Support), WAC (Wholesale Applications Community), HTML 5, voice recognition and multitasking. Samsung would also providing a server development kit (SDK) allowing developers of other platforms as well explore the OS. The SDK would allow developers to look into the apps’ performance with the help of a faster simulator and advanced code.

Bada was first launched by Samsung in November 2009 and right now it is the 1.2.0 version that is in use. Samsung Wave (GT-8500) was the first phone to be launched on the Bada OS. Along with Bada, came the Samsung Apps, their own app store which is apparently growing quickly.

It’s been a while that we got to see some exciting stuff on our gaming consoles. After COD: Black Ops, there’s not been one game that has evoked the interest of gaming enthusiasts. Come 2011, there are definitely a few good ones to look forward to. The ones that we are going to get in the next four months are Bulletstorm, Killzone 3, Mortal Kombat and L.A. Noir.

Bulletstorm and Killzone 3 are due on the 22nd of February, Mortal Kombat is coming out on April 9th and L.A. Noir is out on the 17th of May. While Bulletstorm is an EA Games presentation for both XBox and Sony, Killzone is exclusive to PS3 gamers. Mortal Kombat comes from Warner Home Video games and L.A. Noir is a Rockstar games presentation for both PS3 and XBox.

All playstation lovers may not like the sound of this. According to the reports based on a Japanese site, Sony is planning to shelve its plans of a PS4 and invest its time into launching NGP. Sony apparently wants the NGP to overtake the much famous home console and Sony is heavily banking on the NGP to do this. The Next Generation Portable, otherwise PSP 2 was unveiled earlier this month in Tokyo and the prototype definitely looks fabulous. But, why would Sony want to corner its own very successful gaming console for the much lesser PSP. For now, the news is not official from Sony, but I guess we have to be prepared for an official announcement from Sony any time now as the NGP is nearing its release.

So, do you think we are ready to switch from our big screens back on to the handhelds?

Google’s executive in charge of Android Andy Rubin has confirmed that Android 2.4 or Ice cream will be accompanied by a smartphone. He has also confirmed that from now on every new Android version will be accompanied by hardware, meaning a new device. Both Andy Ruben and Eric Shmidt, the chief executive have confirmed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Ice Cream will be a combination of the tablet features of Honeycomb and the smartphone features of Gingerbread.

Google had already released the Google Nexus S last December alongside Android 2.3 or Gingerbread and according to Google, the sales have been extraordinary. Following pursuit, both Motorola and Samsung came out with their respective tablets based on Android 2.3. No other hardware specs nor make of the next smartphone were revealed at the keynote, though.

The new smartphone from Acer – Iconica Smart which was previewed back in November has now been officially launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This new smartphone from Acer possesses an impressive 4/8″ touchscreen display and the device runs on Google’s Android 2.3 or Gingerbread. Acer has stated that the Iconica Smart would be available from the second quarter of this year, which should be 6 weeks from now.

To complement the wide display with a 1024×480 pixel resolution, is the Dolby Surround Sound Technology. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm 1GHz processor and the Acer user interface 4.0, codenamed Breeze. The phone also comes with Flash Player 10.1 which would also ensure a smooth browsing experience. There is an 8.0 mega pixel camera at the phone’s rear and a 2.0 mega pixel camera on the front.

It was only yesterday that Apple started blocking the iBooks app from reading DMR content on jailbroken devices that Pwnage has come with a new iOS 4.2.1 tool that would fix the iBooks issue apart from allowing users to jailbreak all the old versions of the iPhone Verizon iPhone 4, iPad and the iPod Touch devices and the Apple TV 2. This iOS 4.2.1 tool is an untethered tool that helps users unlock their devices as well.

This new tool also comes in the wake of Apple blocking jailbroken devices from opening purchased ebooks. With the help of the Pwnage tool this issue can be fixed. Also fixed can be the issues with Wi-Fi on the Apple TV 2. So, all the people who jailbroke their devices yesterday and were unhappy about Apple’s move, here is your chance to fix it.

We know Apple and Steve Jobs do not believe in customer surveys much. But, Apple had a customer survey on its MacBook Air. The survey apparently had several questions related to 3G connectivity and if it is to be believed, Apple may want to heed the results of the survey this time around. Most customers have suggested that they would want to see Apple build their next MacBook with a built-in 3G motion along with the Wi-Fi. It is believed that Apple may want to go ahead with this new suggestion, but there is nothing clear about this enhancement.

The survery asked user’s questions about how often they connected to the internet using 3G and what type of devices were they using to connect to 3G networks. We know that the New MacBook Pros are due in a couple of weeks, but will they have the 3G option?